Killing With Kindness
by Morithil
Summary: Ned/Cersei. An almighty What If? One-shot. Even Lannisters can make the mistake of underestimating their enemies and themselves, if only once.


DISCLAIMER: Nope, don't own Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin and HBO have those, pity. Even before sitting down to write this I was shaking my head because Ned would never think it and Cersei would never consider it at all unless it benefited her machinations but there is a certain something in the air in the scenes they share. Oh, and she did try to seduce him once (if only to bring him under her control) and fails. Call it the allure of opposites, I suppose.

KILLING WITH KINDNESS

She regrets the words now. Teeth bared, neck thrown open and offered to the night, to this – she cannot spit the words as her mouth is now an open flower trembling with the _rightness_ of it – so she thinks them furiously instead _demon demon_ no, no but he is not. He is the furthest from some malicious monster with a pitchforked tongue and far more terrifying.

Limbs afire, warm, liquid gold the colour of her own hair spills insidiously through every nerve before bursting into fireworks set to immolate her very core. _A good man_, she shoots the unspoken words at the canopy above them, hoping to puncture the velvet and silk with the daggers of her words. _A man of principle. A man of honour. _The fabric mocks her, intact, complete – as she will no doubt feel if he continues, and her golden head shakes in part denial and part abandon. She will not think that he can make her whole.

_Be good to me._

She had asked him and he had given, was still giving and the promise of more swirled riotously across her vision with every steady, deep, measured _maddening_ stroke of the tongue she had once scoffed to herself was probably as stiff as his unyielding posture. So wrong, so wrong. When had a Lannister been so wrong? When had _she_ so thoroughly miscalculated and misjudged an enemy? Never, never – but it is not this she hears herself cry, but _yes, yes_ and _oh_.

His hands are not Jaime's. With Jaime – twin, brother, mirror image, childhood obsession, wasteland of her puberty – there is still the initial shock, the darts across her skin when his meets hers and the long forbidden mouth teases its way over and into hers. But they are not children anymore, the electric spark of first touch is all that remains and shock is so, so different from surprise. He knows her too well and not at all. She would cast him out, out from her bed as she has drugged, bilious, living-in-the-past Robert but alas, when two come from one egg they can never be asunder. And underneath it all she knows if she cuts the thread it is he that would suffer more.

Impatient, she all but tore at his leathers and her own gown before assured, calming hands took hers into their grip and a small, enlightening eternity passed before she was laid bare on neglected sheets and scrutinized under those eyes, before almost laughably direct but suddenly as keenly penetrating as Northern winds. She had danced forward to seduce, to crumble, and he –

_Let me look at you._

And warily silent, then gasping she had let him strip away all that his wintry blue eyes could, fingertips and flushed throat commanding, inviting, begging _see me_.

Patient. That is what _his_ hands are. Knowing, expert but always first tentative, asking her permission, taking her surrender. She struggled against steady palms, lashed out with curved nails into broad, muscular shoulder – _hate me_ – the chant she cannot speak – _hate me, hurt me, give in to me, use me_ – she would welcome violence now, violence she can deal with, spite her bedfellow, revenge but another lover. And all she got for her feline pains was one wince across that hardened, lordly face and his kindness did not stop then but overwhelmed her, warming, arduous, relentless touches that molded her body into something else, something at last _open_, more than the now impassioned spread of her thighs and her brain bursts to think it but _vulnerable_ and _yielding _and more Cersei than there has ever been.

And when he brings himself to her at last, all controlled power, masterful and possessive but never enraged, nor hasty, nor selfish – gods, he has never been selfish up to this point nor will he ever be, this she instinctively knows now, all things for her pleasure first and she struggles to hate him for it – she welcomes him in as the pestilence does the cure, the mouth of the sea the unceasing river for now she knows how long she has been waiting, aching to know this, to know how _good_ a man can be. She yields as she clasps him to her ever more tightly and he does not mock her need nor her acceptance that she is vanquished but with lips and tongue and teeth, sword-hardened hands and all of his focused passion brings her closer, closer and there is no ulterior motive _– a first time for everything_, her body and her voice sing in unguarded release – oh Cersei hast thou ever been unguarded before anyone? The mouth on hers ravages without robbing, devours without breaking the skin and she understands now the signal of his House for the direwolf is in her bed, swallowing her whole and she has put herself at the mercy of its fatal jaws but received instead its _loving_ caress, the tenderness of wolves and that is more deadly than any winter-sharp incisors that sever flesh from flesh.

Then after as he holds her close, all warmth, strong arms and firm chest _welded iron in worn velvet_ to curl her muted talons into she revels in the tangling of their limbs, the heavy, sated, eyes wide open silence and wonders at the honesty of it all before descending into the repeated vow that she will not think _happy_ and never recall _dream_.


End file.
